I have long enjoyed the novels of Elly Griffiths – see some of my reviews of her work here, here and here. Her titles written under this name have all been crime novels to date, with some set in the recent past, but The Frozen People is a mix of crime and fantasy. The fantasy is that there is a section of the police who can travel into the past to solve crimes – this section’s crimes are so cold that they are described as frozen. Ali Dawson is a member of this section and finds herself in Victorian London investigating the history of a current MP by looking into the life of his grandfather. Unfortunately, Ali becomes trapped in the past, with no obvious way out, and with a murderer on the loose.
Obviously, the premise for this story is unlikely and moves the novel into the realms of fantasy. I wasn’t uncomfortable with the idea but I didn’t feel that it was well worked out. We never learn how the time travel works except that it has been developed by a woman known as Jones who seems to have been given free rein by the police service and to have little accountability. I found the lack of curiosity and the trust in Jones by all the characters to be remarkable – when people are told that there is time travel they seem to be amazingly receptive to the idea.
Ali is an engaging heroine, an older woman with several broken relationships behind her and a grown-up son. She is resourceful and clever and survives well when she has been stranded, although adapting to the Victorian ideas and environment is not always easy. Her colleagues and the people that Ali meets in her travels are all well developed characters. The plot was less well structured I thought and I wasn’t completely sure at one point exactly what they were investigating and what they were trying to find out.
I didn’t hate this book but I thought that it didn’t really shine as either a fantasy novel or as a crime story. I did, however, buy the sequel The Killing Time which resolves some of the outstanding issues from the first book and creates some new mysteries. This is a series I will probably still buy because I like Ali and enjoy the author’s wry look at the world but it hasn’t gripped me the way that I had hoped.
